Tuesday, March 25, 2014

I'm not writing about the covenant of marriage but rather about the seemingly loss of intelligence by the men who propose to their beautiful girlfriends. Apparently, there is a switch in the brains of a large percentage of the male population that flips when they begin the proposal process. IQ's automatically switch to the sub-60's for some reason.

I've witnessed a few proposals in person and thought to my self that I could have done a LOT better than that. It reality, I didn't, but that's the subject for another missive.

Not too long ago, I watched a marriage proposal on YouTube. My male psyche was so wounded by the fumbling and flubbing by the man making the proposal I could only conclude that his girl friend must:

Really love him,

Be the most forgiving person in the world,

Have lost some of her own intelligence for a few minutes.

I couldn't stop watching proposal videos. It was like watching train wrecks happening all over the world.

Many of the men acted like complete 'dufusses':

Their voices went higher. Way higher in many cases.

They bobbed their heads like Gomer Pyle

Their surprise proposal plans were terrible.

Their proposal wording evidenced little if any cognitive thought.

They didn't put the ring on her finger but rather expected her to take it out of the case and do it herself!

Are multiple Dufusses called Duffi? No offense is intended to my ancestors who lived in Duffus, Morayshire, Scotland.

I won't list the exact issues with the proposals. Watch a series of marriage proposals on YouTube and you'll quickly create your own list.

I'm not saying that all of them were trash. Some are terrific. Men acted like real men. They cherished their sweethearts. They treated them like the queens that they are and should be in a marriage. They put the ring on her finger after a carefully crafted, heart felt proposal.

Have many men always been this bad when it comes to proposing? Has the survival of the race depended on the extreme forbearance and pity of women throughout history?

The answer is apparently "Yes!" because the trend continues. Would our world be much different If only the men who were excellent in their proposals won a wife and subsequently had children? Would the dufus trait be eliminated from the human male genome by now?

I spend a lot of time collecting histories about the lives of my ancestors. During that process, I haven't envisioned my male ancestors as being goofy. Some of them were very famous. Some were war hero's protecting their families and nation. Many of them ruled nations. Were they as bad at proposing as other are and have been historically? I haven't injected that view of their short-term insanity affliction in their stories.

Did our grandmothers gather in ladies nights out and tell their proposal stories for the delight of the others? Yes, they loved their guys and obviously overlooked their proposal mind disability but the stories had to be riot.

Probably none of the stories involved a scavenger hunt. None included a cast of thousands (well, maybe it did in the case of the kings). None of them included low resolution video taken by jerky, shaking hands from all the wrong angles with the worst sound possible.

Hopefully their proposals included romance. Hopefully, it wasn't all about survival and arrangement. Hopefully most of them were as good at proposing as the elite class of proposers are today on YouTube.

I know at least one of my grandfathers belonged to the elite class. I've written his story. I'm less sure about my great grandfathers although at least one of them had to be very convincing to win his bride.

How did your male ancestors do with their proposals? Were any of them in the elite class? Has that gene passed down to any of their descendants? Did your husband or you yourself inherit it?

Capture and record their stories as soon as you can. You don't want to loose them. They add the texture to their story in our minds and who knows, maybe some tales of proposal humor that can be shared around yet another gathering on ladies night out.